Secrets of how to create your own website templates design

Create your own website templates but don't re-invent the wheel! When you were at school, you had exercise books ruled with a space at the top and bottom of the page, and margins. You were meant to write your essays into the lined space, and put the title at the top. That was a template.

You wouldn't have dreamed of buying blank pages, and stapling them into books, and ruling the lines yourself - would you? Now you will design even ecommerce templates by using other people's templates and modifying them to suit your own requirements.

That sounds easy...doesn't it? The trouble is that you have to understand a little about html coding or even Cascading Style Sheets before you can modify them.

You will usually need a different website template for each different kind of page on your site. For instance a sales page will look different from a home page or an article page.

Free Web Design Templates

If you use Joomla to assemble your website, there is a good collection of free templates included with the free program. Joomla is free, but the instructions are useless, so you should get some good instructions. Click here for good instructions.

Visit http://www.freetemplatesonline.com/ or just search Google for "free html templates" If you are very lucky you might even find a template that is exactly right for you so that you don't have to change it.

However websites templates usually have adverts for the designers, often at the foot of the page, so if you decide to allow them to advertise on your site, at least use a nofollow link, and make sure that it starts in a new page. Learn what
<a href="" target="_blank"; rel="nofollow" title="></a> means in my free html tutorials.

Your web design templates will probably be one of two types...those that use html tables to put everything where you want it, and those that use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). The latter are much better than using tables, but it is quite a big subject, so I don't plan to write complete tutorials for that type. I may try to cover the minimal amount that you need.

HTML was invented to provide information....not to lay it out in a pretty manner. Then people realized that they could use tables to position everything where they wanted it, and used ingenious ways to force the computer to do what they wanted.

Then CSS was invented to make your HTML pages look pretty. CSS website design templates are usually smaller, and simpler than table-designs, but you have to learn to use CSS to understand them. There is talk of restricting the use of tables in future versions of HTML, but I don't believe it will ever happen. However CSS is the style of the future.

Business website templates are just the same as good normal websites...they should be attractive to the visitor. Your professional website templates will be completely wasted, however clever they may be, if your visitors hit the back button immediately.

I'll be making a video to show you step by step how to create your own website templates by modifying free templates.